18 Carmakers Agree to Share Safety Data

DETROIT — When Mark Rosekind became the nation’s top auto safety regulator in late 2014, the industry was reeling from record recalls prompted by a vehicle defect at General Motors that was later tied to 124 deaths.

Mr. Rosekind vowed at the time to punish automakers for violating federal safety rules, and has since levied record fines against several automakers and required them to accept higher levels of government oversight.

Now he is trying to reform industry practices further with an agreement involving 18 automakers, announced on Friday with the transportation secretary, Anthony Foxx, that calls for companies to collectively analyze and share safety data.

“Real safety is finding and fixing defects before someone gets hurt, rather than just punishing them after the damage is done,” Mr. Foxx said at the announcement at the North American International Auto Show here.

But as a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, he also has a keen interest in applying to automobiles safety techniques that have proved helpful in the airline and technology sectors.

Recall rates have dropped after more than 60 million cars and trucks were found to have defects in 2014. Yet regulators want more collaboration among auto companies to improve safety and communicate with consumers.

“On other modes of transport, we already have a model of industrywide collaboration,” Mr. Foxx said. The Federal Aviation Administration’s “safety management system, for example, requires a willingness among the airlines to share safety data,” he said.

Mr. Foxx and Mr. Rosekind were accompanied on Friday by executives of 18 American and foreign carmakers, including the chief executives of General Motors and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

They endorsed a list of voluntary “proactive safety principles” to increase the number of consumers who respond to recall notices, analyze data on fatal accidents and develop a coordinated plan to ward off digital attacks on vehicles.

The agreement was reached after Mr. Rosekind met with various manufacturers, including a private session on Friday to complete the pact.

The plan was not universally embraced. Joan Claybrook, a former administrator of the safety agency, criticized the measures as ineffective in an industry in which one automaker after another has flouted federal laws and been punished for not reporting accident data and defects to regulators in a timely manner, as the law requires.

“The set of four principles is toothless, lacks any implementation authority and is worth only the cost of the paper they are written on,” Ms. Claybrook said in a statement. “There is nothing preventing the auto industry from disregarding or outright violating these principles.”

Auto executives, including some who have felt the sting of government enforcement actions, welcomed the initiative, even as they defended their internal safety protocols.

“We are already moving in the direction outlined in the agreed-upon principles,” said Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of Fiat Chrysler, which was fined as much as $175 million last year for delaying recalls and not sharing safety data with regulators.

G.M. said in a statement that it was “pleased to support” the government’s efforts to improve safety. “We welcome the opportunity to work with experts in government and industry on the vital issues of automotive safety and cybersecurity,” the company said.

Mr. Rosekind has said that regulators would not back off on enforcement actions, including imposing higher fines, recently approved by Congress, against companies that violate safety rules.

A day earlier at the auto show, Mr. Foxx announced a proposed $4 billion government investment over 10 years to aid the development of autonomous vehicles.

Next week, President Obama is scheduled to visit the show to celebrate record sales last year in the American auto industry.

In 2015, manufacturers sold 17.5 million new vehicles in the United States, breaking the 17.4 million record set in 2000.

Among the most successful carmakers in the market were G.M. and the former Chrysler Corporation, which went bankrupt and required government bailouts from the Obama administration in 2009 to survive the last recession.

Correction:Jan. 15, 2016

An earlier version of this article misattributed several quotations. The comments on the new pact were from Mr. Foxx, the transportation secretary, not Mr. Rosekind.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. and 18 Carmakers Agree to Share and Jointly Analyze Safety Data. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe